We created Zcash, but its ultimate destiny lies not in our hands, but in yours.

I don't get why Zcash team didn't even attempt to protect their investors from copycats. Zooko seems to be a top-tier cryptographer if he could do things like https://twitter.com/zooko/status/863202798883577856, yet no even "Insert CD with the license key" level protection in the coin. How much of the 20% premine is still in the hands of the devs?

Where can i find the official MAC wallet?Is it worth downloading the whole blockchain, or can i send funds from nano pool directly to Bittrex?

Official Zcash client is built for Linux only, there is no official MAC wallet. You can use zcash4mac or Jaxx.Also you can mine to Bittrex directly, but remember its always better to control funds by yourself than entrust them to exchange.

An in-progress blockchain project could one day help users trade bitcoin for zcash without a trusted third party.

Created by zcash developers Jay Graber and Ariel Gabizon, ZBXCAT is a new command-line tool that developers can use to exchange the two cryptocurrencies.

With today's bitcoin exchanges having a history of being vulnerable to hacks (leading to millions of dollars in customer losses), ZBXCAT uses a concept called "atomic swaps" to avoid the need to hold users' funds.

Say Alice has bitcoin and Bob has zcash, and they want to trade the two. Rather than temporarily entrusting their cryptocurrency to a centralized exchange, atomic swaps would let them trade directly across blockchains. To ensure there is no cheating, both users would need to send the cryptocurrencies to each other by a certain time or the trade will fail.

Awesome! 19 proposals so far for the first round of Zcash Foundation grants!! The proposer files an Issue in this dedicated Github repository: https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/GrantProposals-2017Q4/issues The Issue should explain the tentative proposal–informally but in detail. This must be done by September 15th, 2017.Public discussion will ensue in comments on the filed Issue. The discussion will hopefully include support, critique, suggestions for improvements, and pointers to relevant resources.